How many people are paying for their news? For something like YouTube? That stuff costs mega $$$
Back in the day, you were forced to pay for things. You wanted news? You had to put in some coins for a newspaper.
Now you sign on and you get news and YouTube seemingly for free… open standards or not, someone has to pay for it one way or another.
Anyway my point is that the problem is not the lack of open standards. The problem is that we discovered how to do “free” and a lot of people prefer this way whether they want to think about it or not.
I can get behind ads in moderation or subscriptions that aren't mired in dark patterns, but I feel like 30% of my time consuming anything on social media is spent on watching ads, so I just go do something else now.
You’re simply making the case that these services that no one believes useful enough to pay for are controlling everything because they’re frontends for marketing agencies. This isn’t the gotcha you seem to think it is
The only things I willingly and voluntarily pay for are news and music subscriptions and that’s because I value them the most and consider them important to society but I definitely don’t necessarily use them the most.
Anyway my only point is that it has nothing with open standards. People want free and will take advertising if it means it’s free.